Highlights an important mediating process in rhetoric: the situational reconstruction of collective self-boundaries of speaker and audience. Using a psychorhetorical analysis of a missionary speech that was given by a Jewish ultra-orthodox preacher to a Jewish Israeli nonorthodox audience, points to rhetorical context markers the orator used to…

Investigates the use of discourse markers in the "layering of voices" in Israeli Hebrew talk in interaction. The study is based on audiotape recordings of 16 casual Israeli Hebrew conversations between friends and family relatives collected over 3 years. (Author/VWL)

Examines some characteristics of "Mm," in particular its variants, as a weak acknowledging token, a continuer, and a weak assessment within the Australian context. Findings indicate that the most common "Mm" is best characterized as an acknowledging object used to mark unproblematic receipt of the immediately prior talk and no…

Examines the discursive strategies boys and girls use to negotiate conflict in two cultures: the United States and Mainland China. China represents a particularly interesting contrast with the United States. Unlike their U.S. counterparts, Chinese preschool-age girls have been observed to be quite assertive. (Author/VWL)

Examines moments in the course of informal medical encounters between English health visitors and mothers in which motherhood and medicine collide. Within the conversations, motherhood, medicine, and morality are yoked to the interaction order that is inflected and influenced by the medical context of the encounters. The paper discusses motherhood…

Presents an exploratory study based on 20 interviews with Swedish conscientious objectors. The interviews represent a special form of institutional discourse, the evaluative interview, designed to help decide whether or not the conscientious objector is to be recommended for alternative civilian service. The practice has recently been abandoned in…

Topics addressed in this review include ethnology and traditional dialect study, philology, linguistic conversion analysis, and interaction within the social sciences. Finland's size affects these research activities and research on spoken interaction is shifting to group projects with a common focus. (Contains 68 references.) (JP)

Examines how language attitudes are expressed in Legon, Ghana, a multilingual society. Focuses on the graffiti in male lavatories, which offers an interesting glimpse of some of the intergroup tensions existing within Ghanian society. (Author/VWL)

Investigates the social background of oldcomer Taiwanese in Japan while examining their language behavior in intraethnic communication and in interethnic interaction with Japanese. Analysis of two conversations reveals that many Asians seek to pass as Japanese, a behavior contributing to the reproduction of the existing social hierarchy of…